


Beware Green Eyes

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Grey Feathers [5]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Earth-3, Father-Son Relationship, Forests, Gen, Grayson's shaky moral compass that totally exists, Honor, Identity, Mirror Universe, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Revenge, Swordfighting, abuse of healing factor, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 22:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6347734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you run hard enough, for long enough, you'll start to catch up with yourself.</p><p>Grayson has learned freedom. He has not learned regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beware Green Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> The saga of Grayson continues! Warning yet again for brutal, though temporary, injury. Sorry, these Talon boys just have a deeply screwed-up relationship with violence.
> 
> In addition to Romania, I have also never been to the state of Washington. I don’t actually know much about their particular agricultural history, or its effects on their new-growth forests. My apologies if I have inaccurately projected too much New England across the continent. 
> 
> Deer hunting season is definitely autumn and winter, though. And in many areas makes walking in the woods a terrifying gamble with your life on the line, especially if you don't wear bright orange and make a lot of noise. (There's nothing like having a bunch of dudes kitted out in full paramilitary gear wander into your back yard going 'huh, we ran out of woods' to make the whole concept of hunting season into black comedy.)

Grayson’s rash destruction of four aspirant bakery robbers had changed his situation—perhaps no one hunting him would hear of it, or perhaps they all would, and he must perforce assume the latter.

Although he had also destroyed the footage of his fight, his face might be still recorded on older security tapes, one he had not found. Now that he had tipped his hand, any pursuer that heard of the incident and connected it to him would know to look for quiet, multilingual young men working menial jobs. Any other job he took would call for far more dissemblance, and even then he would live in quiet terror of discovery.

He lingered on that latter point, remembering the crippling insomnia he had only just put behind him, more or less. Fear was like pain: it should not be allowed _control,_ but it existed to warn you. And while, for Talon’s body, pain’s warnings were often more than reality required…it was not paranoia, if everyone really was hunting you.

(He would never find another such place—the smell of baking, of walnuts and cinnamon and rosewater, Dumitrescu’s grumbling, Alina Dalca’s tolerant amusement, Antonin sending him off at night with unsold bread and cakes.)

It had been over a year, now, since he had left the Court’s service. He had heard no hint of pursuit closing in, but he could never afford to assume it was not. Even had he not known the silence of an owl’s wings, complacency was death. Or worse. Probably worse.

And it had felt so _right,_ he realized. The burst of violence, the victory. Like lemonade on his tongue. He had killed, since his flight fourteen months ago. Animals for food, and two humans in self-defense. He had killed, swift and clean, and it had been cause for discomfort or relief, or both, and nothing more. But he had not _fought,_ and he had not realized until now that he missed it. Was that, too, a part of himself?

He thought of the Jokester again. The man had never been precisely normal, but they had remade him, Talon and the Owl. Cut him apart and he had come back stranger, stronger, less sane. Less man and more creature. Owlman had given him the seeming of a clown and he had taken it, _owned_ it, kept laughing in Wayne’s face as he used what he’d been given—made into—for his own purposes.

Grayson could certainly never be that laughing child again. Even if he could guess what a circus-raised Grayson his age would be like, he could barely impersonate him, let alone _become_ him.

He met his own eyes in the speckled mirror of the Russian hostel’s communal bathroom. When he stopped trying to dissemble, all his camouflage dropped away, and there was only this: shaggy hair, still lips, flat eyes in which even he could read nothing of his thoughts, though he knew them. He let his hand curl around an absent knife-hilt, and the shape looked as right as it felt. It could be the perching grip of a small bird, almost, but—always, the grasping talons of a hunter returned.

 _This_ was his self.

There was more to him than this—he might have talons, but he was not one, would never be reduced so far again. Would not give up any of the scraps of humanity he had gathered, or cease his searching. And yet. This too was not for discarding. This was the shape of him.

He was not a member of society. Attempts to pretend otherwise were a waste of resources, risky and painful and _doomed_. Admit it, have done. So long as he remained fugitive, he could not live among humanity in peace, and perhaps he could never be content long with being stationary and peaceful, even if it were not denied him. The child he had been had been itinerant, after all, and the Talon bound to a single city. Given the choice, he would be the former.

But he was no longer a child, and could not expect that every part of him could be divided so cleanly in two, with one option to each. Talon had taken up far more than half his lifetime. The robin-boy had been in training for a trade, but it was not one you could ply while in hiding.

He had precisely one skillset. Best to put it to work.

It was less simple than merely making the decision, of course—even once he located some hubs of the mercenary trade and could begin establishing his credibility, he couldn’t show his face carelessly, as that community was where he was most likely to be recognized, short of a gathering of Owlman’s Society associates or the Wilson family reunion. (Supposing they had one.) Nor could he take many jobs at his actual skill level, or he’d gain too much reputation, and then the Owl might notice, and the same avenues which his clients used to contact him could be used to draw him into a trap.

This was always possible, and he scouted every meeting place thoroughly in advance, and generally gave the impression that he lived and breathed paranoia. But there were plenty of hitmen and spies in the world, and while those unattached to any particular organization tended to be either legends, legends in the making, or bottom feeders, he was content to impersonate bottom feeders. He’d never much cared what people thought of him.

As a freelancer, he didn’t have the support of an organization to provide him with vehicles and safehouses, and the pay wasn’t anything remarkable, especially considering the risks.

The pay as Talon, however, had been _nonexistent._ And as a freelancer, he got to _turn jobs down._

It was good he had excellent self-control, or he might have started rejecting commissions just for the rush of being able to do so, and that would have done nothing for his bank accounts.

He’d decided to be three freelancers, since it improved the chances of working steadily without creating a noteworthy pattern of competence. One of his identities was a woman—he was slim enough that with a full mask, light body armor concealing the lines of his torso, and a slight alteration to the way he moved, few people doubted him, and in many ways the female identity required the least pretense, because she spoke only when absolutely necessary, and was a specialist in close-range assassination.

She called herself Sable and rapidly became the best-remunerated of him, since Owlman was infinitely less likely to suspect a female operative of being his missing Talon—Bruce took a rather rigid view of gender; the Circus idiots had used it against him a few times—which meant Grayson could afford to hold back less. She put knives in a wide variety of backs and throats, or occasionally merely threatened to, and never accepted a contract involving children.

As David Teal, he had blonde hair and a practiced grin, and specialized in information retrieval—‘I get in, get out, and they’ll never know I was there’—and as Spin, whose real name was supposedly John Clock, was a competent marksman and skilled hand-to-hand fighter with a good grasp of security systems, who tended to be hired by groups needing a little extra muscle for some sort of heist. They liked him because he kept a level head, a close tongue, and his word, and he liked them because in those cases his fee was frequently set as a percentage of the take, and this was so much more the sort of arrangement you came to over a person rather than a weapon that, even when the job went poorly and his percentage was lower than his flat rate would have been, he was pleased.

Spin wore armor that gave him a heavier build than Grayson really had, and covered his face with a helmet, but decent mercenaries were allowed their eccentricities. Grayson liked that about the community.

He was attacked in his sleep several times, over the next few years. Two business rivals, an employer planning to save himself the mercenary’s fee and thinking to catch him off-guard; once an enemy, by contract. Nothing personal.

It was a relief. The instincts that he had learned in childhood had proven themselves still with him, and he slept more easily having proven himself capable of self-defense at any level of consciousness. (The contract hit had come the closest to really challenging him, and he had had to kill the woman despite feeling no animosity, because she had seen him heal.)

In a lot of ways, nothing had changed. In a lot of ways, he would always be what he had been made into. But in all the ways that mattered, everything was different. He was a free agent. His name was Richard Grayson, even if he was the only one that used it, and he liked chocolate and popcorn, and yesterday he’d melted chocolate _onto_ popcorn and that had been good, too, although it was both noisy and sticky and absolutely a terrible idea. No one could make him do anything he did not choose to do. The worst they could do was withhold payment and try to kill him.

(Well, hypothetically, they could hold and torture him, but no one had managed it yet.)

Tonight, he was picking his way through a forest in the state of Washington. David Teal’s latest client was obviously paranoid, to request a meeting with a data specialist in the middle of nowhere, but the money was good without being good enough to be suspicious, and he respected paranoia. His scouting during the day had turned up nothing suspicious.

The agriculture in this area seemed to be mainly dairy farmers, whose operations must have once taken up more space—he was no expert in forestry, but he’d paid some attention to the subject in the years since his retreat to the Quetico park, and could see that much of this growth was new, cut through by aging, carelessly-built stone walls, and broken by the occasional surviving meadow. Or maybe it had been cropland, abandoned in favor of richer, flatter soil as agricultural technology changed. He did not care.

The _point_ was that his destination was a particular meadow, and he had reached it now. In deer-hunting season, there might have been any number of armed men prowling such a place, especially on a full-moon night like this: Grayson had learned as much shortly after his first return to the States, nineteen months since, to the tune of three rifle bullets to the back and half a dozen dead men, before realizing the ambush had been nothing of the kind, merely civilians so anxious to kill something that they fired at any hint of motion. He had to commend their ability to be silent when motionless, at least; he had not been on his guard, admiring the terrain, and failed to realize he was not alone until the rifles cracked.

But it was June, now, nearly five years to the day since he had left Talon behind him, and that should not be a concern.

The only human presence he could detect was waiting for him, on the grassy meadow ahead.

His client was wearing something cut like a military uniform, though not one Grayson recognized; some sort of black fatigues, marked with flashes of orange as though the wearer was concerned about being targeted by deer hunters even so far out of season, but there was a _sword_ strapped across his back. That wouldn’t have been so much of a surprise if he’d been hired as Spin or Sable, but David Teal had never been anyone’s backup before. Generally, if a lone mercenary was involved in a two-person data extraction/combat effort, it was as muscle, to cover a spy. But if you already had muscle, hiring a spy made just as much sense, really. Or perhaps they were both hirelings, and the other man had merely been engaged first, and deputized him.

He climbed the low tumbled line of stone just within the treeline that had been a halfhearted wall, letting the stones shift under his feet enough to make a little sound.

The client turned to face him.

White beard. Black eye patch. Blue eye.

 _Slade Wilson_ was waiting for him, and somehow Grayson doubted that it was because he’d started dabbling in domestic espionage in his retirement, and gone free-market for his hacker.

He’d _known_ he should have worn a mask for this character, too. The smile hadn’t been enough disguise.

A long heartbeat, as they watched each other— _I know you know I know who_ , though what he’d been before would never have paused just to see and be seen—Grayson flung himself backward under the trees again. He doubted he would get away without fighting, not if Wilson had made such an effort to track him down—it would be stupid to run flat-out, when there could be ambushes waiting in any or every direction, and he’d only reach them winded—but he could refuse to fight on the ground the man had prepared. There were no orders binding him here this time, after all.

And he remembered the Wilsons’ willingness to pour out bullets like water, even in their own home. Open terrain gave a ranged fighter the advantage.

He dove through bracken as shots rang out, then swung himself up among branches and crouched there silent. Waited for Wilson to come into sight, pursuing, and _jumped._

The old soldier was ready for him, but Grayson’s momentum still knocked him off his feet, and they rolled, grappling, digging at one another for every iota of advantage. Grayson snatched for a knife sheathed at the back of Wilson’s neck and received in reply a stunning headbutt that briefly broke his nose. Snorted hard to clear the blood that might otherwise harden and block his breathing, and gouged at the side of Wilson’s throat with his thumb. He would have gone for the remaining eye, but it was on the opposite side; he could not quite reach.

A snatch for his hair came away with the yellow wig. Grayson took advantage of the opening left to deliver a skull-blow of his own, driving down onto the bridge of Wilson’s nose with his forehead, even as his opponent got him in a leg lock and nearly pinned him down. He eeled free when the old soldier’s natural instincts forced a flinch that cost focus, and for a second was the one on top—Slade jerked hard, delivered rapid successive blows to the groin and kidneys, the latter impressively powerful considering the angle, regained the advantage and pressed down again with his greater weight. Grayson repaid him with a chop to the side, just below the ribs.

His fingertips ghosted over the grip of one of Wilson’s guns, which provoked instant response, twisting his wrist near breaking, and Grayson ignored that to take advantage of the imbalance it had caused; rolled them over hard and got his own right hand, for a few seconds, around the soldier’s throat.

Even at his full growth, Grayson was not a large man, and this sort of brutal close-fighting was not one of the things he had been primarily trained for, but he was nevertheless well suited to it, because intimate hurts that most fighters no matter how stoic would instinctively cringe from gave him no pause. Wilson, who had known of his healing ability from their first fight but clearly underestimated its strength, rapidly assessed the advantage it was giving now, and slammed Grayson against the bole of the next tree their struggle carried them near, headfirst.

Talon’s healing had never done anything to prevent that instant of total disorientation as his brain bounced in his skull, and Wilson used that moment to disentangle their limbs and rise to his feet.

Very deliberately, drew his sword, and by the time he was done Grayson was upright again, head trauma already almost entirely vanished, right hand on the hilt of the longest of his knives, sheathed at the small of his back.

He drew, knowing there had been a split second of vulnerability there that his opponent had not taken advantage of. Then looked up from his own long blade, black-coated so it would not catch the light and all but invisible under the color-stealing moon, to Wilson’s longer one, a different weapon than the last but single-edged bright steel, just like that first night.

Here they were, again.

Bright steel, and that blue eye gouging into him.

Wilson had, he realized, been planning this fight for years. Hunting him. Waiting for their rematch. Grayson had known about the hunt, his still-circulating wanted poster, been aware of the government’s unremitting determination to regain the face he had cost them by breaking into their fortress even though the President he’d been dispatched against was a year and a half out of office, but he hadn’t realized it was this—personal. That the man would be determined to meet him in battle.

He’d thought about Wilson, in the intervening years. Once or twice. Especially after he finally realized his own parents hadn’t sold him after all. Thought about him and his too-seeing eye, but not like this. When it came to the game of survival, Wilson was the driving force behind the government’s uninspiring efforts, not a player in his own right.

Except, clearly, he was.

He’d been training, Grayson noted as they ducked and lunged through the trees, exchanging bladed blows just as they had five years ago, in the other Washington. There’d been a stiffness to the President’s movements then, of skills fallen from their peak due to neglect. Not now.

But Grayson too had improved, become more flexible a fighter if not necessarily more skilled. And if he still didn’t really want the old man dead…he wasn’t fighting to escape before he could be cornered this time, either. He wasn’t on enemy turf, and he wasn’t under anyone’s orders. Pressing him to his limits now was a very different thing indeed.

Wilson seemed determined to do it anyway. For all that the former President was more human than Grayson could ever recall being, he did not flinch when his own blood ran, and when he turned the edge of his sword wet, his eyes did not linger on that blood, either. Last time, he had been a bird defending its nest, all flurry and outrage. Now he had run Grayson to ground and laid a snare, and yet…

He slipped in and out of shadow without fear, because this was not his first midnight fight in woodland. Grayson could have reasoned as much, from the little he knew of the man’s war-service, but he _knew_ it. Just by watching. He was a stealth-killer in his own right, and Grayson was what he was hunting, and he was _angry_ —five years later and the anger burned on, but that should not be surprising, because was his own anger with the Owls not still hot in his mouth? And yet there was something _missing._ Some hunger. Wilson was angry and yet he had held back, had waited for Grayson to draw his own blade, had not reached for his guns since Grayson put himself in reach.

He wanted something besides the assassin’s death and Grayson _did not know what it was_ , and so even though it bettered his chances, it was not welcome.

Grayson set his teeth and gave everything to the attack.

He bled for it, but his bearded opponent staggered back from a slash that should have opened his belly—yet instead merely sliced his dark uniform down to the armor beneath. Grayson felt his lips part slightly. Of course. Not pajamas, this time; mission gear. He had felt the solidity of it as they grappled, and of course sensible mortals took such precautions. _Gutting,_ somebody had laughed to him once, _can really mess up your whole day._

“You’re smiling,” said Wilson.

They were the first words either of them had spoken. The first moment of real surprise, maybe. Until now, each had known the other already knew anything they might have wanted to say.

Grayson hadn’t been smiling. Not really. The tight line of his mouth that bared his teeth was a sign of tension that went back to his early days as Talon. The King of Owls had considered training it out of him, decided against it because of the unease it provoked. But he did smile, now that it had been said, because he _could_.

It had not been permitted that he reply, when Wilson spoke, at their last meeting. He could have, now. He had no master.

He chose not to.

He beckoned, instead, and regretted it instantly because the mighty two-handed blow Wilson brought down next broke straight through his guard, laying his chest open deep enough to notch the bone.

Without drawing back for power, which would have given Grayson time to recover and mount a new defense, the long blade whipped up again and drove, point-first, clear through the meat of his shoulder. (It had been aimed, before his hasty dodge, for his right lung.)

Grayson _dropped_ , unhesitating, dragging the blade down with him as he did, because the upper edge was flat and could not begin to slice its way free at such an angle—even the sharp edge would have had some difficulty, cutting up through where arm and collarbone met, unless it happened on just the right point to sever the tendons cleanly. His move was agonizing, insane—no one with a halfway normal body would have done it, if not out of the natural unwillingness to invite worse pain into what was already agony, then because of how much more likely it made the injury to irreparably cripple the limb.

Therefore Wilson wasn’t sufficiently braced to resist, and Grayson was able to reach the ground, brace himself against the dirt, one hand wrapped around the back of the swordblade to keep it trapped. Kick out, with enough force to snap both bones in Wilson’s left lower leg.

A fierce, low growl of pain forced its way out between clenched teeth, and the older man’s left knee hit the ground.

Grayson somersaulted back, out of range, letting Wilson’s sword slide free, sheathed his own weapon, and ran.

Wilson would probably pursue him even on a broken leg, but it would cost him enough speed that Grayson could now leave him behind, without forsaking caution entirely.

He could not have missed numbers enough to encircle this wood completely. Even if they had closed in from somewhere, he could find a weak place in the line. He _would_ escape, again. They would not hold him.

His path out should closely parallel his path in. They might be expecting that, but they would be stupid to concentrate _all_ their force there, and the slightly elevated possibility of encountering more enemies was not enough to outweigh the benefits of already knowing the terrain.

He leapt over a stand of brambles without being snagged; rolled, vaulted upright over a large stone and raced onward with his boots trying to stick in the mud, barely rustling the ferns up a shallow slope until he reached another, far smaller break in the forest, this one merely the place where an ancient tree had fallen, and not yet been replaced, though the slim grey trunks of the rapid-sprouting aspens were beginning to fill their way in.

There, where the ground lay open to the sky, he stopped. _Someone was waiting._

A breath, and the someone stepped from behind the gnarled roots of the fallen cedar, into the moonlight.

Grayson had very little grasp of beauty. He did not know whether it was a natural insensibility or a result of his upbringing, but even after five years free, his aesthetic understanding was strictly pragmatic, especially when it came to human beings. But that abstract quality had significant interpersonal currency, and so he had always maintained some awareness of attractiveness, in its role as a source of social capital.

As his new opponent straightened into the light, Grayson recognized the body language of someone who was beautiful, and knew it. Something in the arch of the neck. The proud tilt of the chin. The way a curl fell against a cheek. You could use that against people—most famously Owlman had targeted that part of Harvey Dent, cutting apart his self-image at the root, though the practical results had been mixed at best—and Grayson noted that this opponent was especially likely to flinch from potential damage to his face.

Then he met overlarge green eyes, and recognized the face itself.

He knew those eyes. They had stared at him, shocked, shattered, terrified, furious, on the night Talon had ended.

The older Wilson boy, the one he’d killed—he was nothing. A corpse in a sea of corpses. But Joseph—if he had not been underestimated, if he had not dodged that first blow. If he had not cried out to those who heard him. The mission would not have failed. The Wilson parents would not have known to join the fight. His scream had changed Grayson’s life.

He owed those eyes.

_They went black._

He tried to rear back, and found he could not move, as Joseph’s form went blurred and uncertain—his vision was going; he’d been poisoned, _when,_ with _what?_ —but the forest behind remained sharp and clear even if he couldn’t turn his head or eyes to look at it—the ghost of a boy he’d failed to kill stepped forward and kept stepping until he’d walked straight through Grayson’s _face_ —a feeling like cold water.

His limbs moved again. _He was not the one moving them._

Shoulders rolled. His weight shifted from foot to foot. Gloved fingertips brushed his throat.

Drew back, and spread themselves in front of his eyes, experimentally twitching.

A rustle in the brush; he turned to face it. Wilson emerged, his broken leg dragging slightly. He seemed to have applied a basic splint to himself.

“Dad,” said Grayson’s voice. His mouth bent in a smile.

The old man’s eyebrows arched. “You got him.” He was not unilaterally pleased.

Neither was Grayson.

Somewhere, even further back in his mind than his consciousness had been forced, he could hear himself screaming.

“Turns out his voice works fine,” said his mouth. His right hand flicked scornfully through a sign he didn’t know, and knew no better for his hand having made it, but Wilson seemed to understand. His eye was heavy with some sort of feeling.

Grayson was far from fearless. Personally, he considered himself a coward. Most of the things that frightened other people meant nothing to him, but when he _was_ afraid—when there was something he considered worth fearing, he fled.

It wasn’t as though he had anything to fight for.

Only himself. But he _had_ a self, he’d achieved that. He’d die before he’d lose that. He’d run forever, he’d fight and kill the whole world before he’d lose that.

His hand rose again without his will, combed thoughtfully through his hair, and then pulled the most obvious of his knives from its sheath at his belt to run it along his opposite thumb, splitting the skin so that blood dripped out onto the forest floor—he felt his face split in turn into a wide, unaccustomed grin, as the cut vanished again.

The pain was nothing—a faint stinging, easily ignored—but what it _meant—_

He did not owe Joseph Wilson _this_ much. Even if he had, he would never willingly pay.

Which was why he had been given no choice.

“Joey…” said Wilson.

Grayson’s eyes snapped up to him. “Oh, sorry. Am I making you _uncomfortable,_ Dad? With my creepy body-snatching powers?”

“It’s not the powers that worry me, son.”

“‘It’s how I use them,’ I _know_. At this rate I could just burn a CD of your three favorite lectures and carry it around to be my father.”

So ungrateful. The boy who had screamed for help with such deep belief that help would come to him had grown to take that faithfulness for granted. He did not appreciate having parents both willing and able to rescue him. Grayson would have slapped the boy across the face, had it not currently been his own, and had he had control of either of his hands.

Joseph snorted. “Oh, and he thinks I’m a spoiled brat because I’m not still thanking you every day for stopping him from finishing me off, or something.”

Joseph Wilson could _read his mind,_ and the screaming grew louder until it threatened to drown out rational thought. It had been years since he was this afraid. Since the night terror had broken through terror and he had fled beyond his master’s reach, reclaimed his body and his name.

He felt his teeth clench. “Don’t start,” said his tongue and throat and lips, and they were no longer addressing Slade. “You killed my brother,” the surviving Wilson boy reminded him. “He bled out a few feet away from me, and I wasn’t even looking at him when he passed, because you had your knife at my throat. Which you cut. Destroying my voice.

“Do you understand? Whatever I do to you, it will be less than you deserve.”

As if deserving had ever had anything to do with what happened to anyone.

“I’ll teach you to regret it,” Joseph hissed through Grayson’s teeth. Again he stroked flesh with the knifeblade, again blood ran—more rapidly, from his arm this time. Grayson writhed up within his own skull, and was pinned helpless. “I’m just getting started,” his lips whispered. Another stroke. Grayson was indifferent to the damage, but still he screamed. Joseph smiled.

And suddenly, the terror ripened into fury.

Certainly he had wronged this boy. Grayson had some respect for the idea of revenge.

But that he thought to teach _him_ pain. This boy, this much-beloved little angel to whom the worst thing that had ever happened was a few minutes’ exposure to _Talon,_ no matter how devastating the result, this _child_ whose parents had flown to his side and given him everything in their power, as the _nation_ stood by holding its breath in the hope that he would live…

Whatever devilry allowed the stealing of his body, it also had sunk hooks into his most inner self. That was violation beyond anything he had lived through, but it was also _opportunity._ He had known the value of a sacrificial blow when Joseph Wilson was still sucking at his mother’s breasts.

Quickly, abruptly, so that Wilson would not have time to prepare some countermeasure, Grayson opened himself up to it. To his _childhood_ , the months and years that had been the breaking and making of him. Let himself relive the things that in daily life he always shut away and did not touch, even as fact-memories, let alone experiences.

Wondered as he let the onslaught come whether this forced connection would convey _understanding_ , somehow, of the incomprehensible. Could help this brat who played at torture grasp what it was to break another living thing apart with your own hands until it would give you anything, for the sake of a moment’s mercy.

What it was to fight on with half a dozen swords rammed through you to the hilt. What it was to be a plaything for men who loved the sight of blood.

What it had been to die, chained to a table, six years old and understanding that _nobody would come to save you_.

 _This is me,_ he thought, and used the thought as muscle behind the spear forged of a lifetime of remembered agony. **_This_** _is what you thought yourself strong enough to steal._

A cry burst from his throat and he could not tell which of them was screaming. Wilson, probably. There was too much shock in the sound for it to be him. His own suffering could never be a surprise.

And with that thought he brought his right arm around, movement smooth and easy and natural in the possessor’s distraction, and plunged the blade of his hand into his gut and up inside the ribs.

Another scream, unexpected real pain tearing through real stolen flesh more overwhelming than the worst remembered agony, and Wilson scrabbling to seize control of the traitor arm again, but the jerk of Grayson’s hand inside his ribcage as they fought for dominance brought such searing new hurt that he lost it again—they had pitched backward onto the grass in the two and a half seconds since he launched his mental attack—and the father was there now, crouched on the good leg, hard hands on shoulder and elbow but bewildered, hesitant to use his full strength when the hand attached to the arm was buried in fragile organs, and his son was buried in the flesh.

The sight of Slade Wilson’s drawn face blinked into greater resolution suddenly, not more clear in any technical sense but somehow more intense, and there was a shift in the single eye that suggested he could see whatever had caused the shift in perception. Then sight went distant again but he had still his right arm, and Grayson pressed on, up, hot blood gushing, fingernails scrabbling toward his heart—

With a sticky, tearing feeling like Velcro unpeeling from his soul, Joseph Wilson surrendered. Toppled out of Grayson’s back into a heap on the grass, and all his limbs were his own again.

“Joey!” the President exclaimed, all his attention momentarily on his son. And in that window Grayson used his reclaimed freedom to strike _._ His right arm was still unavailable, deep in his own torso, but he had three other limbs and they moved unerringly. Left fist, to crack across the face. He felt bone break, but at this angle it could only kill if Slade fell poorly, passed out, and drowned in his own blood. One foot drove up, to catch the edge of the ribcage, and one down into the soft flesh of the lower abdomen.

Slade was down, at least for this second. And Grayson was upright again, extricating his dominant arm from his own viscera and whirling. The younger Wilson was collapsed in the grass, beaded with sweat, gaze distant, limbs trembling. His breath was uneven, and Grayson drove a swift foot into his diaphragm to keep it that way, then spun to bring his heel over an attack, against the side of the old soldier’s head.

President Wilson fell senseless, and for a long second there were only Joseph’s tiny wheezing attempts at breath to fill the silence of the glade.

He stood over their helpless forms, as the blood dripped from his fingers and the damage inside his chest crawled back together. He always felt that internal injuries healing felt oddly like churning maggots. Not that he’d ever had maggots grow in his own flesh; his wounds never lasted long enough for that. But he’d seen them.

Joseph was nearly the color of a maggot right now. Grayson despised him.

He had won. They were helpless, and miles from support. He could kill them both now. Or kill the father quickly, to eliminate him as a threat, and take a little time with the son.

Or perhaps he should merely put those dangerous eyes out. Perhaps the little fool would learn better than to hunt him, if he lost some major functionality at every encounter.

A breath of wind roused itself from somnolence and whispered through the leaves. _Fear,_ muttered the aspens, but it was not fear that filled him now. It was that black anger, the one that had fueled his victory over the body-stealer, the one he had never managed to feel unalloyed against Owlman even now, because he had been trained too well. One that made him feel jagged and reckless and consider simply slitting Joseph’s throat properly this time, and letting his father wake to find his little golden monster already bled out. Kill, torture, maim…so many choices.

In the end, he did none of it. Keeping an eye on the blond for signs of recovery, while carefully _not_ meeting his staring eyes, he turned the elder Wilson onto his side with another rough kick, swiftly stole his most visible weapons, and was gone.

&-&

Having discovered the absolute lack of backup the Wilsons had in fact left in wait for him, Grayson sat back in the bole of a large hollow tree miles from the battle site, examining the weapons he had carried away in lieu of his promised payment. The sword was of good quality, longer than he liked himself, and cumbersome without its sheath, which had been too securely bound to the soldier’s back to bother freeing. That, he would sell.

One of the pistols was light and smooth enough he might keep it; he was developing a fondness for guns even though he would never resort to them automatically. The other was a heavier piece, more like what the more arrogant functionaries in Owlman’s organized-crime subsidiaries had preferred. Good quality, as far as he could determine these things, and engraved along the barrel with a scrollworked _Deathstroke Squad_ on one side and _One shot, one kill,_ up the other. Some sort of memento, he gathered. Possibly valuable, but entirely too distinctive. He should not sell it; that would leave a trail, evidence that he had been where the sale took place.

He was distracted from evaluating his prizes—he had taken them mostly to demonstrate that he had not fled in disorganized terror, but quite intentionally walked away—by a sudden deep breath resounding, slightly crackling, through the small speaker tucked into his ear.

The audio bug that had been all he had on him was entirely inadequate, of course, since the boy could speak only with a stolen throat and had none to steal, but as this was an inconvenience entirely of his own making, Grayson spent no frustration on it.

Fixed to the back of Wilson’s collar, the tiny microphone picked up his voice well. “Joey, look at me.” There was a silence in which Grayson wondered whether or not the boy obeyed, and whether his father honestly trusted him enough to return the look, if he did. “You’ll be alright.” Not quite command, nor reassurance. Diagnosis, almost, Grayson decided. His affection for his remaining child had proven a weakness tonight, but he obviously had some control of it. “What did he do?”

There followed a few seconds of silence, which must be the younger Wilson signing an answer. “Ah,” said the father at last. “Well, then. You’ll have to be more careful from now on. You’ll be alright,” he repeated. “That’s what’s important.”

There was another period of quiet, which might or might not contain silent communication. Grayson began stowing the guns and knives alongside his own.

“His eyes flashed blue, for a second, before you came out,” Wilson told his son. “He looked…triumphant.” Another silence, and then quietly, “I see. Did you at least learn who sent him, that night?” Then, “Yes, it matters! Oh, son. Come here.”

There was the noisy rustle of fabric, collar rasping against the microphone. Silence, broken only by the faint disruption that would have been breathing through a better pickup.

Then a tap. More rustling, and the soft rip of adhesive giving way. A pause. “I don’t know what you hoped to learn,” Wilson’s level voice said, almost directly into the microphone so that the speaker in Grayson’s ear thundered with it. “But you won’t. Joe says,” he added, “that you won’t catch him like that twice.”

 _That’s my line,_ Grayson thought, as his hands wrapped the stolen sword in his cut and bloodied outer shirt, for travel. He smiled, a little, at how easily he had summoned the retort. If they had been face to face, he could have spoken it, at the normal interval, without a pause.

At the thought of being face to face with Joseph Wilson again, though, a shiver ran up his back. “We will find you,” Wilson pronounced on the other end of the surveillance device, as if he knew the ‘we’ made it a far more terrible threat. “This isn’t over.” The speaker let out a tortured burst of sound as the bug was crushed, and then fell dead.

…Grayson was entirely recovered from the fight. He could be out of the country again by tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Some liberties taken with Joey’s powers, partly because they were inconsistent in canon anyway and partly on the assumption that some of the differences when he was an evil ghost came from ‘evil’ instead of ‘ghost.’
> 
> Good Slade and bad Joey is _so weird_.


End file.
